We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

There are no real class divisions in America except one: the college-educated versus the non-college educated. It helps to think of this in terms borrowed from the world of a Jane Austen novel: graduating from college is what makes you a “gentleman.” (A degree from an Ivy League school makes you part of the aristocracy.) It qualifies you to marry the right people and hold the right kind of positions. It makes you respectable. And even if you don’t achieve much in the world of work and business, even if you’re still working as a barista ten years later, you still retain that special status. It’s a modern form of “genteel poverty,” which is considered superior to the regular kind of poverty.

If you don’t have a college degree, by contrast, you are looked down upon as a vulgar commoner who is presumptuously attempting to rise above his station. Which is pretty much what they’re saying about Scott Walker.

The excerpt on the class division certainly seems like it was updated from George Orwell's observations in the last part of 'The Road to Wigan Pier" where he discussed the 'shabby genteel' of the lower upper middle class. Those with the middle class training and tastes but the working class incomes.

What really has to chap the college fetishist is the fact that almost all the great material advances of humanity have come from non-college graduates. Bessemer's steel making process, Tesla's induction motor, Malcolm Mclean's containerization, those who made the microcomputer useful for non-nerds, etc.

College is good for making cube monkeys; not ignorant by any means, but best suited for the incremental and pursuing the visions of others.

I agree with the author's comments regarding DHS. It is a worthless piece of bureaucracy, I know that's redundant, but the author says we should have attacked Saudi Arabia!?

I wouldn't say that Saudi Arabia is guiltless in the rise of radical Islam, nor do I necessarily think Iraq was the best target but what makes Saudi Arabia an appropriate target? Unless there is evidence that Saudi Arabia had some involvement in 9/11 or they were at least an international pariah, attacking them makes no sense to me.

Is It Really Safe to Give Babies Peanut Butter? Back in the early 60s we had a next door neighbor whose oldest son, from the age of three or so until he was a teen, refused to eat anything for lunch but a peanut butter sandwich. When lunch time arrived, he would say that he had to go home and eat his peanut butter. If he ate at our house, it was a peanut butter sandwich; nothing else. Last I heard he was hale and hearty, going on 60.

"Silicone on trial"
This was an unholy alliance between nutcase anti-science alarmist and ambulance chasing trial lawyers. It always was about the money and never was about health or the citizens. We learned nothing from this. It continues today, fat may have been pulled from the fire but sugar looks like it will bring sweet rewards to trail lawyers in the near future. Not to mention HFCS, GMO and any number of harmless food additives that we have safely used for generations. Perhaps we are just too stupid, too uninvolved a people to deserve to survive the 21st century.

"Is it really safe to give babies peanut butter" "The incidence of peanut and tree nut allergies in the United States quadrupled in the past 13 years".
Does anyone really believe that in the last 13 years nut allergies have quadrupled? Are these scientists unaware that claiming your child has a peanut allergy is the latest fad and guaranteed to get you attention and special treatment. It is a mostly harmless munchausen by proxy craze that is affecting bored housewifes all over this country. Not so very different from the gluten allergy fad.

Doesn't that just lay the real agenda of the New York Times and the real meaning of "inequality"? The NYT has been pining for a worker's paradise since Walter Duranty. Now that there's a threat to that model of equality in Cuba, they are unhappy.

Maggie Thatcher has still not been proven wrong (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okHGCz6xxiw).

Ban Bibles: "A spokesman for The Christian Institute said: “It is hard to imagine how a person could actually be offended by a Bible simply being in their room." A lot of people these days just looooooooooooooooooooove the opportunity to be "offended".

Cuba: Income inequality doesn't matter if it's between the communist party apparatchiks and "the masses".

Ukraine: Benghazi Barry just wants to ignore it until it's his successor's problem. Who can then blame Barry for the mess it is.

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